"One truth: that the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound, not to descant upon it, but to venerate it; that truth and falsehood are set before us for the trial of our hearts." ~Bl. John Henry Newman

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Posting will continue to be sparse for at least a few weeks. My computer broke somewhere between Georgia and Western Mass, so my only Internet access is on the little iPod and my husband's work computer. Perhaps the enforced silence will bear Great Fruit in future blogs. Or hopefully just in my heart.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

The move has come and not quite gone, and we love our new house and the sweet, clear air of New England summers. The girls can spend hours outdoors, and I don't have to live in an air-conditioned box. So beautiful!

It's so strange moving to a new area where we don't know a soul. The only moves we've ever made have been for school--college or graduate work--which offered an automatic group of friends and colleagues. This time, however, it is proving difficult to find "new friends," as Miriam puts it. New friends will come, but only with time and patience.

Still, it feels like home because we are together. Our family suddenly makes up my entire world in a way they haven't before, and that is a grace. The feeling of isolation passes as soon as the Scientist Dad walks in that door, because home is where we are together.

I'm also loving the online community with a new appreciation: Even if we're not physically present to one another, the blogging moms and their readers provide a much-needed witness that we are not alone.

So, to all the bloggers of beauty out there: Keep writing. These are the days when I appreciate the online community we have more than ever. We need to know we are not alone in the world, and God lets us know this both on and off-line.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The three girls and I arrived in NH with my mom last Sunday. We'll stay here for another week while the Scientist Dad packs up our little life in GA and drives the goods north to New England. Moving with a newborn infant and two small children has required some creative scheduling, to say the least.

I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about the first few days home alone with all three kids in the new house: all those props and helps I'd created for myself in GA will be pretty much gone. Where is the playground? Where are the art supplies? Will Bella nap in her new bed? Will the baby ever nap? What if the kids get sick?

All those questions plague my waiting days here. My mother is pretty much the Complete Nanny right now, which is so necessary when my dear husband is absent and allows me to rest and recover from childbirth. But my mind is still absorbed in Things To Come.

And then the baby cries.

She is absorbed only in the Present Moment.

Then Bella asks for a hug.

She, too, knows only the Present Moment.

Although my own brain keeps telling me how much easier this whole move would be without Ana or without Bella, I think it is actually their presence which makes the change real, true, and good. They constantly (and by "constantly" I mean every five or ten minutes) force my forward-thinking and fretting self back into the demands--and blessing--of this moment in time:

"The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. The will of God is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love."— Jean-Pierre De Caussade

The extent of my "faith and love" is the extent of my fidelity to the demands of today. Physical motherhood surely is a vocation to the present moment. I will only find the will of God insofar as I love those He has given me to love. Tomorrow, next week, and the months afterwards are not here: I can only commend them to his Providence. Right now, I can only serve him in his little ones who need me here.

My unhappiness and resistance to my vocation, I believe, comes when I think of "what might have been" had we fewer children, or more money, or better health, or this or that. Such thoughts must be rejected, because they are grounded in temptation and lead only to self-pity. There must be no "vacillation," as Mother Michael-Maria says, between what my flesh tells me would make me happier and what the image of Christ in my soul calls me to.

"I think what has happened in the world is that people have chosen to change so much in order to fit into the world and are vacillating. We’re going much too far and aren’t staying firm in what is given to us."

Waiting for life to get easier--for the baby to sleep, for the kids to be older, for the move to be completed--is not going to make me happier or holier. Surrendering to the present moment, where the Christ whom I have chosen dwells, brings joy and peace.

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Every mother can be a student of philosophy and needs a way to learn answers to the great questions: who am I? where am I going and where did I come from? how do I know good and evil? what is there after life? The gift of motherhood is also a responsibility to form our minds and hearts for our children and husbands. This blog is a way for us to work together through these questions in the virtual communion of saints and sinners.